


Twice Timed

by Washedawaycloud



Series: Action Bows to Mercy Every Time [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Soul Mate AU, Soul Timer AU, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-16
Updated: 2017-02-16
Packaged: 2018-09-24 20:46:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9785510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Washedawaycloud/pseuds/Washedawaycloud
Summary: He had her. He lost her. He will find her again.





	

[@healersprite](https://tmblr.co/mpWZWTMjJ_IJifCfzGcuoyQ)| Soul Timers | Solas/Tirzah | Accepting

* * *

**H** e is young, a newly born teenager. Stepped from the aether and into being. It had hurt, it was a long process, longer than he’d liked. The body was clumsy - he was clumsy. His parents look so very pleased to see him. His timer rests on his heart. Easier to hide, he had seen the Elves, watched them enough, to know such things could cause ridicule. 

* * *

The numbers glow against his skin, little bits of his soul shifting, changing, showing him when he will find his other half. He has such a long time to wait, two hundred years! 

##                                 He wonders if they are already alive.

Solas is his name. Pride. He wears the name happily. It isn’t wrong, He is prideful, the magic he wields is born of centuries of watchful learning. It is elegant, even though he is young still. Swordcraft fascinates the young man, whose hair has turned to ropes. It was curly when he first came here. 

Mother says he does not comb it enough and thus it has twisted in on itself. Solas supposes so, but finds it to suit him. The rope like coils are clean, it isn’t as if he were rolling around in dirt! Father says nothing. Father is very quiet, speaking seldom but always with weight. Father is wise.

A war rises, and Solas runs toward it. He has his staff, his sword, armor that would do to keep most blades from him but do little in the long run. It’s a bloody brutal thing, but it brings about a new age. Solas is _more_  now. His dearest friend and fellow Generals are lauded. The People respect them. The spirits reenact their great victories at night while the moons shine down on them.

Two months - he is Elder Solas now. He trains other dreamers, he spies for his friends, his brothers and sisters. It doesn’t feel like he is doing the wrong thing. This work helps to keep the many tribes running smoothly, does it not? Anger and upset are quelled long before they turn to hate. He helps. His work is right.

He sees her at the  _Ise'melana dhea'him_ festival. The height of summer, a day that drags on forever. She dances in firelight. She is - beautiful. Her skin is dark, rich like the earth. Her laughter reminds him of sweet bloom. Her tribe is not his, but still he approaches.

Lavellan. Her name is Lavellan, and she is more beautiful than anything he has ever seen in his life. When his hand touches hers, their marks chime. The festival is in an uproar, an Elder has found a mate among the People. None had done so yet. Though Andruil has no mate yet.

##                                                     The People rejoice. 

And then, he loses her, he loses his family, Mythal is gone, the People enslaved, he loses it all. Because his brothers, his sisters, his peers, have become so much _less._ If Solas could hate them, the Wolf would. He would damn them all to a greater hell than what he has. May their dreams keep them warm while uthenera withers them sealed below the sea.

* * *

**The Dragon Age**. They call it the Dragon age, because the beasts they thought they’d killed have come back. Beautiful beasts of infinite wisdom and talent - and the humans had tried to kill them. The griffons are all dead. Killed as beasts of burden. The People are shades, wisps and so many without the gift. This world Solas has woken to is broken. It is _wrong_. 

_He_ is **wrong**.

His timer is ticking. Lavellan is dead. Yet his timer ticks. Two years, five days, six hours.

Solas walks into this new world a man condemned. Set upon the path of _dinan’shiral_. For a month, he stays within his fortress, he eats carefully preserved foods, stasis spells so carefully placed, weaved. The gaunt skeletal thing that woke, gradually becomes a man worth calling a man. The second month, Solas walks from the mountains down into the Valley that was once where his wife had haled from. Where _he_  had haled from. It is apparently called the Free Marches now. 

Templars are a vile set of men. An organisation of overseers that suppress the magical population. Four times now, he has had to employ underhanded tactics to avoid them. Three times the former member of the Evanuris killed them. It did not feel good, no matter how damned they are.

Small villages are how Solas survives at first. He trades healing for food, avoid the Mages and the Templars who raze all between each faction, running down each other, by standers as well. The war, is as all wars are, it feels right, when you are in the thick of it. When it ends - they will understand how terrible the cost was. How much the blood spilled weighs upon their souls. 

Cities make his stomach turn. The alienages, ghettos, the People. They are hardly people. Once all of his race had magic. Once they were all far more than the First Men had been. Now? They are stunted, withered, cut off from the fade. They are shadows, they may as well be dead.

Those that wander the forests, they scorn him. Name him flat ear but allow him at their fires. The language, his language, is wrong on their tongues. The words do not mean what they once did, what they should. Their faces are branded. “To honor the gods”, they say. His stomach lurches. He tries, _tries_  to tell them the truth, to share history, to correct things.

He is run from more than one camp. He gives up on these  _Banal'rasen._ New plans are made, and his abounding charisma aides him more than ever before. The ease with which Solas creates a small network is - troubling. Elves are more than willing to throw their lot in with him. It’s a mad plan by all accounts. Find a foci he hid ages ago, in a bolt hole long scavenged and grave picked. Disgusting. These ‘people’ are not worth the earth they stand on. They are not worth the gift only a handful have. 

One year, Six months. Twelve hours, Seven minutes. Solas is in Tevinter of all places. The “great tribe of humans’ that ‘destroyed’ the Elvhen empire. So fascinating how history changes when there are none to dispute it. 

Magical Theory is a paltry thing. Magic is graceless, reduced to its most basic forms. Spirits are corrupted left, right, and center. How many friends has he lost to this disgusting era? How many more will be lost. These _shem’len_ are ruining this world.

Rumors of a group seeking great power come to him as he hides and slips away from slavers of the North and Templars of the South. A promising set of rumors. An agent has found his foci, in the _Archon’s home_. It is far easier to direct this group of Venatori to it. With luck, one of the shades will unlock the orb, and he will be free to take back his foci.

One year, One month, Twenty hours, Nine minutes. A dreamer mage stumbles upon him, one who appreciates the past, one who sees the truth. Solas is almost, almost, questioning if the dreamer is Elvhen or not. Either way, he is an asset, and he knows of a _working_  network of Eluvians. His mission is to take the password.

Six months. Tirzah Lavellan. The Herald of Andraste. The Inquisitor of the Second Inquisition. A young woman who achingly resembles his lost wife. A young dalish who hounds him for information, who engages in lively conversation with him about the Fade, magic, Corypheus, the orb. She bares the name of his lost love. She bares her face.

Tirzah is, must be, a mercy spirit. She is terrible in her mercy. Her judgements make men tremble. She makes them _live_  with blood on their hands. She makes them work to right their wrongs for the people they wronged or would have. She is a wonder.

He shouldn’t desire her. He should not have kissed her, danced with her, kissed her again. Yet, Solas cannot separate himself from her either. Fingers cramping from braiding her hair. Bags full of little trinkets for her hair. Some of his old trinkets he’d saved. All of them adorn her.   
  
One month. Elfin in nature, generous in spirit, fierce in battle. Solas can’t keep her within his orbit. He cannot possibly. He wants to. Spirits he can’t imagine doing this without her. To go to her as she wants him to without her knowing who he is. It’s wrong. 

Two minutes. Her face is bare. She is - so beautiful. So young. He can’t do this. He can’t stay with her. Condemn her to a short life as he ends his. Ends his to bring back the world as it should be. 

He begins to tell her he must leave her, the words are coming out of his mouth, and the bell rings. His timer. _His timer_. Oh. Oh spirits.

                                  “I - I. Tirzah. I have to go. Please forgive me.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Have another timer AU for Solas. Because he needs all the soulmates. Specifically ones that will kick him in the ass. Repeatedly.


End file.
